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Reporters Tour Iraq Palaces Off-Limits to U.N.

Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister led foreign reporters today on a tour of buildings described as presidential palaces, showing off lawns as big as soccer fields and ornate sitting rooms that he declared the United Nations weapons inspectors would never see.

The Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, insisted during the tour of about a dozen palaces with reporters that Iraq is hiding nothing relating to the possible production of major weapons systems.

[But at the United Nations in New York, the director of the arms inspections, Richard Butler, said the area that Iraq had designated as ''presidential and sovereign sites'' was much wider than the palaces reporters were allowed to visit, Reuters reported.

[''Iraq's proposals would establish as sanctuaries places we would never go,'' Mr. Butler said. ''The establishment of such sanctuaries would establish a very large number of physical sites in Iraq in which prohibited items could be hidden.'']

Arms monitors have demanded access to the presidential compounds to determine whether Iraq has met United Nations orders to destroy its weapons of mass destruction -- a condition required to end sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

''They shall never be allowed in,'' Mr. Aziz told the reporters. ''Their inspection injures the dignity and sovereignty of the nation.'' He offered the tour, he said, ''so that you can see yourselves that these are normal presidential sites.''

Reporters saw five palaces in the presidential complex on the western bank of the Tigris River in Baghdad, which is off-limits to civilians. One building featured a huge domed hall tiled with Italian marble. Another had bronze statues of soldiers and paintings of President Hussein leading his army into victory, and huge bronze busts of Mr. Hussein on the roof.

Reporters also toured the presidential complex outside Baghdad, where man-made lakes are filled with wild ducks and birds. One palace there featured a wall filled by a huge Italian marble mosaic of a falcon.

Some of the buildings were vacant of furniture and staff. A few sentries stood guard at their entrances.

Mr. Aziz was asked why he was opening the premises to journalists but not to the inspectors. ''You are guests,'' he replied. ''You are not inspectors. Guests are allowed; inspectors are not allowed. Very simple.''